Jung's interest in European mythology and folk psychology has led to accusations of Nazi sympathies, since they shared the same interest.[69][70][71] He became, however, aware of the negative impact of these similarities:
Jung clearly identifies himself with the spirit of German Volkstumsbewegung throughout this period and well into the 1920s and 1930s, until the horrors of Nazism finally compelled him to reframe these neopagan metaphors in a negative light in his 1936 essay on Wotan.[72]
There are writings showing that Jung's sympathies were against, rather than for, Nazism.[c] In his 1936 essay "Wotan", Jung described Germany as "infected" by "one man who is obviously 'possessed' ...", and as "rolling towards perdition",[73] and wrote
... what a so-called Führer does with a mass movement can plainly be seen if we turn our eyes to the north or south of our country."[74]
Jung would later say that:
Hitler seemed like the 'double' of a real person, as if Hitler the man might be hiding inside like an appendix, and deliberately so concealed in order not to disturb the mechanism ... You know you could never talk to this man; because there is nobody there ... It is not an individual; it is an entire nation.[75]
In an interview with Carol Baumann in 1948, Jung denied rumors regarding any sympathy for the Nazi movement, saying:
It must be clear to anyone who has read any of my books that I have never been a Nazi sympathizer and I never have been anti-Semitic, and no amount of misquotation, mistranslation, or rearrangement of what I have written can alter the record of my true point of view. Nearly every one of these passages has been tampered with, either by malice or by ignorance. Furthermore, my friendly relations with a large group of Jewish colleagues and patients over a period of many years in itself disproves the charge of anti-Semitism.